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Discussion on: How do you learn?

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Ben Halpern

I tend to learn via a lot of immersion, basically ongoing casual learning by reading a lot of DEV content.

And then I tend to go deepest by identifying a specific need for the new thing I'm learning and then motivation takes it from there. I tend to focus best when I'm deeply motivated and the rest kind of takes care of itself. Lots of Googling. Somethings that "specific need" is driven by necessity, but sometimes it's sort of manufactured. Like, I find a way to need it because I'm interested.

I used to do a lot of podcasts for breadth but I've essentially replaced it by hanging around DEV (with some podcasts here and there).

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maxdevjs

I am especially interested to the manufacturing concept, finding a way to need it, part. How do you balance this component? Letting it to roll, "discipline", shaping priorities, ...?

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Ben Halpern

I used to have a harder time with discipline and distractions before starting DEV. Now my time is pretty filled up and I like what I'm doing that I get tired pretty quickly with new things that aren't obviously helpful.

But sometimes I need to kick myself out of that and be more exploratory. Usually this is when we need to shift to a new approach as a company, but I need to learn more before I can have an opinion. In this case I don't know we need the new tech or concept, so I kind of pretend we do. That's the manufactured need I guess.

I think the big take away is knowing your own motivations and what trips you up and learning how to play the right games with yourself to get down to actual learning.

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maxdevjs • Edited

Thank you, your last sentence is extremely relevant. That's when things flow :)

EDIT:

As an aside, it already happened that the manufactured need ended up clashing with company needs?